Thursday, September 17, 2015

Another eunuch has a self-serving post-Obergefell moment

David Prosen is a gay man who is as toxic as Tony Perkins. David Prosen is a gay man who, in service to his Catholic faith, has made a decision to be celibate (they say “chaste”). Prosen was featured in that ludicrous video, The Third Way: Homosexuality and the Catholic Church. Prosen thinks that all gay men should be like him and that assertion makes Prosen the target for a considerable amount of well-deserved criticism.

To make matters even worse, Prosen (a Catholic therapist or life coach) is the co-author of a pamphlet titled “Mom...Dad, I'm Gay: How Should a Catholic Parent Respond?” After assuring parents that there is no gay gene, well … you know where it goes from there. Prosen is an advocate of reorientation “therapy” for children. I call that child abuse.

Thursday, Mr. Prosen takes to the conservative Catholic website Crisis with a polemic titled “The Bigot Barrier.” Prosen's point is that just because someone disagrees with others doesn't make him or her a bigot.

In spite of Prosen's efforts to suggest otherwise, disagreement and bigotry are different. Because, for example, Prosen disagrees with the premise that gays deserve equal protection, we disagree. Because Prosen advocates for gay citizens not to receive due process and equal protection, that makes him a bigot. When – particularly as a gay celibate – Prosen tells parents that there is no gay gene with the intended inference that sexual orientation is a choice then I not only disagree with him but would suggest that he has crossed the bigot threshold.

I don't want to go through this entire thing but here is a sample. It is a Gish Gallup:

Gay marriage is now legal. Did anyone stop to think why Christians
opposed this in the first place? Apart from profound and legitimate
sociological concerns regarding the redefinition of marriage, there were
concerns about personal liberties being compromised. Supporters of gay
“marriage” loudly proclaimed and promised that this would not hurt those
who opposed them. I remember hearing statements like, “my being able to
marry someone could in no way hurt you.” And yet, these promises or
statements weren’t true. What have we seen? We have seen Christian
business owners sued or forced to close their shops; even worse, some
received death threats. Is this tolerance? Is this love? The very people
who loudly demand toleration deny it to others.

We knew perfectly well why some Christians opposed marriage equality. It was slavish devotion (devoid of critical thinking) to ancients texts and/or slavish obedience (devoid of critical thinking) to the pampered prelates of the Catholic Church hierarchy.

“Concerns about personal liberty?” Opponents to equality decided to become self-manufactured victims. These were people who intentionally defied local non-discrimination laws as they regard public accommodations. Their objective was to be punished for breaking the law. At the time, these were usually in states where same-sex marriage was not yet legal. The laws that they violated were in place long before same-sex marriage was legal.

These folks wanted to make a point. They did. It was pointless. Moreover, these instances were all part of the same-sex marriage debate and nobody in the gay community fighting for marriage equality suggested that these people should not be sanctioned for their unlawful behavior. To suggest that we promised one thing and then reneged is, for lack of a better term, bullshit. Since Obergefell that idiotic county clerk in Kentucky (whose name I will not write) disobeyed a court order.

As for the threats, Christians are always claiming to receive death threats. And don't throw that reverse tolerance nonsense at us. As a gay Jew I know a thing or two about minority status, oppression and intolerance. I have been the object of intolerance for who I am. Mr. Prosen is the object of opprobriumfor the decisions that he makes. These are decisions that he continues to make. Those decisions make him a bigot.